Monthly Archives: October 2007

A couple of folks 'n' friends have written to ask if my home is at all threatened by any of the fires raging around the Southland. I appreciate the concern and I even more appreciate that the nearest fire is at least eighteen miles from me. Sadly, I know folks whose homes are in danger, including one in San Diego who's lost his.

Obviously, it's all very sad but as I get older, I find that this kind of disaster increasingly makes me angry. No, not angry at the forces of nature. No point getting mad at them. But there is a point in getting mad at all the trivial, unnecessary things our government spends its time and our money on. Every minute they spend debating things like that moveon.org ad and every billion that disappears mysteriously into the Iraq War is a resource we don't have to protect our citizens when a fire or Katrina hits. We hear a lot these days about "value voters" and I don't know that I share some of their values. Mine include helping out our fellow human beings in time of trouble, which means being able to help. We can't eliminate hurricanes but we could sure eliminate a lot of the nonsense that limits our ability to respond when a hurricane occurs.

In other depressing news: It's barely hit the wires but singer-actor Robert Goulet is hospitalized and in critical condition, awaiting a lung transplant. I know the man has been the subject of some jokes dwelling on his ego and/or seeming willingness to appear in anything. In fact, I sheepishly admit, I've written a few in my day. But I've also always admired him as a first-rate talent and entertainer. A few years ago, I saw him at Carnegie Hall and he sure filled the place with a sense of history and stardom. Here's hoping he has more such performances ahead of him…for our sake as well as his.

So a little while ago, I'm on my way home from FedEx and I stop into the store because I need about a dozen things. On my way in, I notice that the check-out lines are almost all very long but there are two "ten items or less" lines that are pretty short. I immediately decide I only need ten items.

I get my ten items and head for checkout. One of the two Express Lines is now very long but the other one is short so I get into it. Then I notice why it's short. The man ahead of me has at least fifty items and is determinedly moving them from his cart onto the conveyor belt. I inform him politely that this is the "ten items or less" line. He looks up at the sign, agrees that that's what it says and resumes moving his 50+ items onto the belt. The rules apparently do not apply to him.

The checker, who has now noticed the problem, informs the fellow that he has too many items for this line. He says he's sorry (he isn't sorry) but he had his cart pretty well unloaded before he was aware of that. He quickly puts the last eight or nine items up on the conveyor belt and announces he's in a hurry and he's not moving his purchases to another line.

The checker informs him that she's sorry (she is sorry) but she can't let him do this. It wouldn't be fair to the others in line. There are about six of us. He says, without polling us on the topic, "That's okay. They won't mind."

I say, "I mind." The lady behind me proclaims that she too minds. In fact, the sentiment is unanimous. We all mind.

The man says, very matter-of-factly, "I'm not moving to another line. You either check me out here or I'm taking my business to another market and never coming back."

The checker says, "We don't want to lose your business, sir, but I can't do that."

"Fine," he says and storms out of the store, leaving his 50-60 items sitting on the conveyor belt. The checker calls over a bagger who begins clearing the guy's selections and returning whatever can be returned to the shelves to the shelves. There are a few pieces of meat that were cut to his specifications and some hot foods that may have to be discarded.

The manager comes over to see what happened and several of us commend the checker for enforcing the rules. He says, "The secret of this job is knowing when to enforce the rules and when not to. And if you're not sure, you always side with the rules."

By this point, the conveyor belt is clear so I begin loading my selections onto it. As I do, I realize that I have miscounted and I have eleven items. I quickly ditch a can of Campbell's Bean With Bacon Soup. Just to not cause trouble.

In the Republican debate the other night, Governor Mike Huckabee told the audience that the signers of the Declaration of Independence were "brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen."

And that's true if you believe that one out of 56 is "most."

I already told you about the lovely birthday party for June Foray last Friday night. Harry McCracken did me one better. He shot video of her gracious speech, posted it to YouTube and put a link on his website. You can go over there and read what he had to say, and you can watch the video either here or there.

Every time I mention Chuck McCann on the ol' blog here, I get a ton of e-mails from folks who are immense fans of him and everything he does. So I'll mention that he plays a "crazy judge" (that's how he described it) on Boston Legal tomorrow night and next week. And I'll mention that Chuck has a website which includes some terrific video clips of him in action. Hunt around and you may even find the commercial he did for Right Guard deodorant with Groucho Marx.

Conservative (sort of) columnist Andrew Sullivan discusses The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. I think Sullivan (sort of) misses a key point, which is that the humor of those programs is largely about the people and not their politics. A President who stumbles over every sentence, a Vice-President who shoots people in the face, a Senator caught in a men's room scandal…that stuff is the mother lode of current events comedy writing, no matter which party the players represent. And both Comedy Central shows are more about the pundits and the press than the elected officials, anyway. When he says, "…but the bipartisan guest list cannot disguise the anti-establishment, liberal bent of the show," he seems unaware that comedy, by its very nature, is usually anti-establishment. If you're going to laugh at someone slipping on a banana peel — and I never have but it's a metaphor — it's funnier if it's a rich fat cat and not a poor or powerless individual. Comedy doesn't have to be liberal but it's probably easier that way.

This is a commercial for one of the dullest toys I can recall from my childhood. I didn't have one but Johanna Preuss down the block did. I think she got it second-hand and I think we played with it for a whole ten minutes before it went into the closet forever. One can only imagine the meeting at the Remco Toy Company when someone said, "Hey, you know what kids really like? Pretending they own and operate a drive-in movie theater!" You'll notice they tell you the projected images are great but don't show you an example. I think it was just a cheap slide projector that put up a few fuzzy still shots.

I don't know who the boy is but the girl is apparently Patty Duke, who at the time — around '58, I'd say — was twelve years old and working constantly in live TV and commercials. Shortly after this, she appeared on Broadway in The Miracle Worker, playing a young girl who was deaf and blind — in other words, exactly the target audience for this toy.

After 9/11, the FBI managed to wring a confession from an Egyptian national named Abdallah Higazy. He confessed that he'd participated in the horrible plot. But he didn't. Even the FBI no longer considers him a suspect. So how did they get the confession out of him? Steve Bergstein has the whole story on his weblog.

David Jobe writes to ask little ol' me…

I've been following your entries on the (potentially) upcoming WGA strike with great interest. I'd be curious to know your thoughts on what Nikki Finke is reporting on her blog about the likelihood of and timing for the strike, especially with regards to how accurate you think her information is. Her blog purports to represent the studios' point of view, and I'm wondering how accurate you think it is.

Fairly accurate, I think, if you take it as what the studio heads want us to believe. In labor wars, one's public posture is always calibrated for effect. That applies to all sides in all negotiations. I don't buy that anyone running a network really "welcome[s] a strike because they believe the 2007/2008 TV season is dead on arrival anyway" or that they'd say that even if it was true. If you think your schedule's a catastrophe, the more prudent position is to moan, "We had some potential hits but that %@#&% Writers Guild Strike (or the threat, thereof) killed us."

The most interesting line in that piece is where Les Moonves said, "I'm not concerned about the state of CBS. I'm a bit concerned about the state of network television generally." Some others in comparable positions to his might not be that perturbed if the major networks lost still more market share to HBO, Showtime and Basic Cable, as well as home video and gaming. That's because those people may not figure to be in the network teevee business much longer. But Mooves just reupped his contract and ain't goin' nowhere, so he may be sitting there, thinking of how those other forms of entertainment got a huge boost from the '88 WGA Strike. No one can ever calculate what the studios lost that year but it was probably greater than any dollar estimate you've seen. Not meeting the WGA's rather modest demands that year was far from cost-effective. It actually wounded the networks' entire business because a lot of loyal network TV viewers found other interests in life and never returned…at least not with the same loyalty.

In any case, I don't believe the Producers are confident that they can get through a long WGA strike on "reality" shows and games. They'll say they are but they've got to be terrified of more viewers discovering they can amuse themselves without the likes of CSI:Wherever and Two and a Half Men.

The intriguing thing touched upon in that article is the question of when we'd strike if we strike. The WGA Leadership could call a walkout at any time after November 1 if no deal is in place then. Some people have suggested that we'd continue working, sans contract, until such time as the Screen Actors Guild pact was up, at which time we'd link arms with them, sing a few choruses of "Kumbaya" and present a united front. I consider that scenario highly unlikely. The SAG deal isn't up until June 30, 2008 and that's a long time from now, plus the Producers would have to be suicidal to allow such a marriage to occur…or even to seem possible since it would embolden both sides. Besides, a WGA-SAG partnership could ultimately be a rocky one, anyway. It would be very easy for the AMPTP to float proposals that would screw one union at the expense of the other, thereby driving a wedge.

I'm thinking that if we're working without a deal into December, Management will set a lockout deadline and say, "If the WGA doesn't accept our current proposal by X date, we withdraw it and your work and paychecks stop." Everyone hopes, of course, it will not come to that.

I have no idea what's on the minds of the WGA leadership in terms of timetable, nor do I know their thinking about Interim Deals. What those are are "favored nations" deals we make during a strike with studios (mostly independents) who are willing to sign. Writers can go back to work at those companies and then, when the final big contract is signed, the studios that signed interim agreements can opt for its terms. These deals are generally controversial from our side, both for strategic reasons and because some writers like the idea of everyone hanging together. They're generally frowned upon by the majors and they pressure the smaller producers not to go for them.

Will that be part of our battle plan? I have no idea. But you're going to hear a lot about them as a strike grows more likely. And it will grow more likely.

I'm kind of a sucker for the show, Forever Plaid, which is always playing somewhere near you, no matter where you are. I first saw it at the Canon Theater in Beverly Hills, a few days after my father passed away. It was a rough time in my life, obviously because of that but also because of some other problems. Still, I had tickets for the show — ordered long before — and I decided to go, regardless. I was glad I did. Even though it's (sort of) about people dying, it's such a happy, entertaining show that it did a lot for my sense of well-being that night. In fact, on the way out, I purchased tickets to come back and see it again a few days later, and have since seen it perhaps another half-dozen times. The casts are not always as good as the material but the show always works.

This is a spot from a TV morning show. The guys then starring in Forever Plaid in El Cajon (that's near San Diego) appeared to plug the show and perform a number from it. Here are the four of them for four minutes…

It's too early to set your TiVo but don't worry. I'll remind you when we get closer to the date.

That date is January 4, 2008. That's when Turner Classic Movies is running the film that you cannot watch without wondering, "What the hell were they thinking?"

That's right. They're running Skidoo.

Wow. It doesn't get any better than that.

Okay, I've watched a few episodes of The Price is Right as hosted by Drew Carey and I can't help but commit heresy: I think he's a much better host than Bob Barker ever was…or at least, he will be if he gets a wee bit more comfortable in the role. He still has the look of a guy who can't believe he got the job but that will pass. He's also still trying to do Barker's show, as opposed to Drew Carey's, which is probably wise. Carey is a much funnier guy than the format requires and my sense is that he's been advised, or perhaps has decided on his own, not to change things too much his first few weeks. Devout Price is Right fans first have to accept that he's worthy of their favorite show before they'll be ready to tolerate anything different. So he's suppressing his urges to be a little looser and to not do everything the way Bob did.

I already like him more than Barker. He doesn't have that smarmy self-adoration. He actually seems to like the contestants and not because they're fawning over him — which so far, thankfully, they're not. Carey's "nice guy" image doesn't appear to be a mask that he dons when the cameras are on. I never felt that way about his predecessor. I'll bet the people who work on that stage over at CBS are a lot happier now, too.

When I first heard it was going to be Carey, I thought that was a poor fit. Now, I'm thinking not. The Price is Right formula has gotten very stale over the years. Everything that could possibly happen in a game of Plinko or The Money Game has happened a thousand times, and even adding new games won't reduce the sensation of déjà vu because they won't be that different from the old games. CBS, I gather, first went looking for someone who could replicate the Barker style, then realized that was exactly what they didn't want. The one thing that could keep that show going for a while is a host who breaks away from that and makes it his own. Drew Carey has the capacity to do that. I think I'll wait a couple of months and then tune in and see him doing it.

Ben Schwartz, who has written some of the best mainstream press articles about comics, writes about the new biographies of comic book and strip artists, including my upcoming book on Jack Kirby. The piece contains some awkward phrasing that I assume occurred in the editing stages: One section makes it seem like The Complete Dick Tracy is a reprinting of Kirby's work. Also, I'm usually pretty diligent about referring to partners as co-creators so I can't believe I said that Jack created Captain America and didn't say he co-created it with Joe Simon. And lastly, I'm not supervising the reprinting of Jack's Fourth World material at DC…just contributing advice and afterwords. Other than those minor quibbles, it's a great piece.

This runs a little over six minutes but you'll love it. One of the cleverest, funniest men I know is Chuck McCann, who is an actor and a puppeteer and a voiceover artist and an inventor and if I ever needed a liver transplant, it wouldn't surprise me if Chuck couldn't do it and still be very funny at the same time. We have here a sketch that he did on one of his TV shows. Chuck is the man on the right and he's also the narrator. The gentleman on the left is our pal, the late Bob Ridgely. Ridgely was also a voiceover artist and an actor and an announcer and the possessor of the wickedest, filthiest sense of humor I've ever encountered. Here is one of the cleanest things he ever did…

Michael Kinsley defends the Alternative Minimum Tax.

Is there anyone out there these days who thinks that taxes should be lower for all? Everyone I see these days who advocates the cutting of taxes seems quite uninterested in trimming what our government spends and sometimes — as Kinsley notes — even hostile to the idea that new expenditures should be linked to some funding source. Unless I hear someone get realistic about how to pay for cuts or new expenditures, I figure it's all just another way of saying, "Spend as much as possible on the stuff I care about. Just make sure someone else pays for it."